not marrying, either through losing suitors or rejecting them. Everybody
supposed that these rejections were founded on secret reasons, always
ill interpreted. One said she was deformed; another suggested some
hidden fault; but the poor girl was really as pure as a saint, as
healthy as an infant, and full of loving kindness; Nature had intended
her for all the pleasures, all the joys, and all the fatigues of
motherhood.

Mademoiselle Cormon did not possess in her person an obliging auxiliary
to her desires. She had no other beauty than that very improperly called
la beaute du diable, which consists of a buxom freshness of youth that
the devil, theologically speaking, could never have,--though perhaps
the expression may be explained by the constant desire that must surely
possess him to cool and refresh himself. The feet of the heiress were
broad and flat. Her leg, which she often exposed to sight by her manner
(be it said without malice) of lifting her gown when it rained, could
never have been taken for the leg of a woman. It was sinewy, with a
thick projecting calf like a sailor's. A stout waist, the plumpness of a
wet-nurse, strong dimpled arms, red hands, were all in keeping with the
swelling outlines and the fat whiteness of Norman beauty. Projecting
eyes, undecided in color, gave to her face, the rounded outline of which
had no dignity, an air of surprise and sheepish simplicity, which was
suitable perhaps for an old maid. If Rose had not been, as she was,
really innocent, she would have seemed so. An aquiline nose contrasted
curiously with the narrowness of her forehead; for it is rare that that
form of nose does not carry with it a fine brow. In spite of her thick
red lips, a sign of great kindliness, the forehead revealed too great a
lack of ideas to allow of the heart being guided by intellect; she was
evidently benevolent without grace. How severely we reproach Virtue for
its defects, and how full of indulgence we all are for the pleasanter
qualities of Vice!

Chestnut hair of extraordinary length gave to Rose Cormon's face a
beauty which results from vigor and abundance,--the physical qualities
most apparent in her person. In the days of her chief pretensions,
Rose affected to hold her head at the three-quarter angle, in order to
exhibit a very pretty ear, which detached itself from the blue-veined
whiteness of her throat and temples, set off, as it was, by her wealth
of hair. Seen thus in a ball-dress, sh